Chase Briscoe in action Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. (John Harrelson/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

By Alan Nadeau III, SWN Staff Writer

AVONDALE, Ariz. (Nov. 2, 2025) – “We’re f****** experts at overcoming adversity.”

That was crew chief James Small’s message to Chase Briscoe mid-way through Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway, and Briscoe proved his signal caller right in spades down the home stretch.

In a race where if something could go wrong, it did go wrong for the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops team, Briscoe, Small, and their pit crew never gave up, no matter what was thrown at them.

Because of those facts, an 18th-place finish in the race at the one-mile desert oval – and third place in the final Cup Series standings – does not do justice to their story throughout the entire weekend.

The story began with practice, where Briscoe was one of multiple drivers who suffered a tire failure during the 50-minute session.

In turn, Briscoe and Small weren’t able to run nearly as many laps as his championship-contending competitors, so he had less to work with going into qualifying to determine a set-up. 

Briscoe qualified 12th, where by comparison, his Championship 4 opponents all qualified in the top three, with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin winning the pole.

The silver lining for Briscoe, however, was that he got his first career victory in the Cup Series at Phoenix in 2022 while racing for the former Stewart-Haas Racing organization. But, at the same time, the spring race this year didn’t go well for the No. 19 team.

That made the question simple: Which way would the wind blow in the desert for Briscoe and company?

For a race that got chaotic in the end, the first stage was the proverbial calm before the storm. A caution-free run for the first 60 laps saw Briscoe balance out and finish in 10th. 

After pitting and coming off sixth, Small gave Briscoe advice to open up his corner entry, saying, “If you fix that, we stand a chance. If you don’t fix that, we’re not going to have a chance. It’s pretty black and white.”

Stage two began, and everything remained normal at first. But when the caution came out for Shane Van Gisbergen on lap 106, as it turned out, Briscoe had a flat tire. Over the radio, Briscoe reported that he felt like he had a vibration the entire run. Briscoe pitted, and became mired back in traffic. 

After the restart, when asked if he still had a vibration, Briscoe replied, “terrible!” He also said he felt like something was bent, and then later reported he felt like another tire was about to blow. As if it couldn’t get worse, Briscoe said the vibration got worse when he was on the brake pedal.

Luckily for him, another caution waved and gave the No. 19 team an opportunity to pit again. Briscoe advanced to 14th on this stop, and Small came over the radio to tell him, “The car is fine; the pace is fine. It’s just whether we can make it to the end with nothing going wrong.”

On the restart, Briscoe jumped up a few spots, and continued to gain as the run went on, including a three-wide pass to go from 10th to eighth at one point. With a caution late in the stage, Briscoe closed out the second act in seventh, a far cry from where he was at the start of stage two.

And then, with Hamlin and Championship 4 opponent Kyle Larson both having issues on pit road, Briscoe found himself fifth to start the final stage and in contention with a chance.

With the final stage of the race, and the season, underway, Briscoe made a charge towards the front, going from fifth to third and battling Ross Chastain for second early before grabbing the spot by lap 207.

For a while after, Briscoe was running laps faster than leader William Byron, trying to run him down. 

But, as everything was finally looking up, a curveball was thrown yet again. With 95 laps to go, Briscoe suffered another flat tire, just three laps after Kyle Larson had one go down on his car. Like Larson, Briscoe made it to pit road, but now was behind the 8-ball again.

A caution with 92 laps to go allowed Briscoe to get the free pass back onto the lead lap, just before he reported running something over under caution and needing his left side tires checked. 

"I swear it’s just debris out there, man,” Small said on the radio, something that drivers and crew chiefs alike were clamoring about for most of the day and louder still as the race went on. That said, NASCAR reportedly didn’t see anything needed done, so the race continued.

Notably, Briscoe only had one set of sticker tires, and some scuffs, left on pit road to use, with more than 80 laps left in the race and at least one pit stop left for all the frontrunners. 

Briscoe battled his way through traffic to climb up the order, before a caution with 54 to go brought everyone down pit road again, putting Briscoe ninth for yet another restart. Once the race got going again, Briscoe battled up to sixth again, before another caution with 34 to go. 

This, as it turned out, was where things got crazy. Briscoe and Kyle Larson elected for just two tires, while Byron and Hamlin took four. That put Briscoe second on the restart, as all four title contenders lined up inside the top four. At that point, it was truly game time.

Briscoe nailed his restart, taking the lead from Larson at first. Then things got dicey with the Championship 4 going four-wide, as Byron and Hamlin got around Larson and Briscoe, the latter settling in and falling back to sixth with 20 to go.

Everything seemed settled then, with Briscoe set to earn another top 10 and his teammate finally earning a championship.

But with three laps to go, a tire failure sent Byron into the wall from second and produced the race-changing caution. All but three cars pitted. Briscoe and Hamlin took four tires, while Larson took two.

Briscoe restarted well outside the top 10, and couldn’t get back up into contention in the final two laps, finishing 18th. 

But, as Briscoe noted in his post-race interview, it wasn’t about the finish. His day Sunday was a pure lesson in perseverance across the board.

“(That was) certainly eventful. We never gave up. That’s been the story of my whole career, never giving up,” said Briscoe. “You never know what can change at any point. I felt like we were good enough [to win the championship. We came from the front to the back two or three different times. Had a really good Bass Pro Shops/Tracker [Boats] Toyota.

“Just wish we could have been on an even playing field at some point.”

Overall, Briscoe finished with three wins, 15 top fives, 19 top 10s, and seven poles in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing. So how big was the season for him?

“It was big, just in the sense of, you always think you can do it [but] never really know if you can. This year was to prove to myself, and certainly a lot of other people, too, that I feel like I belong here, right?” Briscoe reflected. “Looking forward to obviously building on that. Really this year, I felt like we gave the field half a season head start because we were learning so much throughout the process.

“Now, we’ll start on an even playing field next year and see if we can be better.”

But, the big question looms: can he get back to championship-contending position in the future, regardless of what format NASCAR chooses to use to determine its season-long titlist moving forward?

“Certainly, we think we can get back here,” Briscoe affirmed. “James and I were talking, we don’t even feel like we’re at our full potential yet. I definitely feel confident we can get back.”